Man and their Fathers
All men whether they know it or not are always trying to prove something to their father’s whether or not they have a good relationship is irrelevant, all that is relevant is that he will try to prove something to his father.
I had a friend who had a terrible relationship with his dad, the history behind it is not pretty, but every time he’d achieve something he’d make a toast to his father and one day I asked him about this and he said that he did it because his father had died before he had a chance to prove to him that he wasn’t useless.
I had another friend raised by his mother and grandmother, his father left when he was seven and his mother and grandmother struggled to raise him but they did and he grew up and became a doctor. So I couldn’t understand it when at the age of thirty three he went in search of his father. When he found him his father rejected him once more. So as I listened to him bemoan all that had happened to him I found myself questioning his decision and I was puzzled and angry with him for this so I can only imagine how his poor mother and grandmother felt?
For some reason boy’s are always trying to impress their father’s good or bad. Whether it’s just an issue of proving that I made it despite you, or showing you how great I am so why don’t you love me, or I just want to be like you.
Boys want to impress their father’s whether out of spite or simply because they are proud of themselves and they want their father’s to join in that I can’t say.
However I will say that for me a man is not a man unless he knows who he is and that is a man in his own right. For me as long as you are seeking your father’s approval for all that you do than you are not this. It’s one thing to have him respect you and another to have him validate you.